Social Question

Coffee Party arises to challenge the Tea Party. Which beverage party suits you?

Coffee Party’ Joins the Political Fray
The Washington Post reports there’s a new civil society group named after a caffeinated beverage, and they’re quickly gaining supporters across the country. The Post reports that the Maryland based Coffee Party is the brainchild of Anabel Park, a 41-year-old documentary filmmaker. The idea took off when she jokingly posted on Facebook, “let’s start a coffee party… smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss ‘em off bec it sounds elitist…”

Her idea is to “promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people” and has gained more than 37,000 Facebook fans following it in a matter of days. Chapters have sprung up in more than 30 states, and Coffee Partiers held their first meet-ups in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles over the weekend.

What’s your take on this? Ready to join a beverage party? Coffee, tea, milk or Red Bull and vodka? Or would you rather just stick to the two-party system we have?

I can’t. I have not got the time, and am simply not motivated enough to try to learn still more political ideology. I have way too much on my plate as it is, and really wish we didn’t have to have all this bickering about politics to begin with. I am woefully under informed and realize that this is my own fault, but there is simply too much information out there and my main focus at this point is my studies. I hope I can count on a few of you to break stuff down for me.

I’m sympathetic to what the tea party originally meant, before it was hijacked by right-wing, pistol-toting, Jesus-wears-an-American-flag flaunting, gay hating, whack jobs. That being said, the coffee party seems pointless in many ways. Foremost, that a middle ground is a fantasy that I don’t feel is really possible. I’m a tea drinker who enjoys the occasional Dunkin’ Donuts Decaf.

Harley, why don’t you move to Ghana where there is minimal functional government to disturb your bitter musings and tax you for basic services. Be sure to take along a lot of guns and potable water. Write us and let us know how you’re doing—if you can find a postal service or Internet connection.

I’m serious. You bitch about government as being the evil of evils, but I’d really like to see you drag your old ass out there and really try to live without one. You and most geriatric Libertarians are all talk and hypocritical bullshit. “Keep the Government out of my Medicare!” What a joke. 25% to 35% of the budgets of the average American community hospital is subsidised by Federal money. They can’t exist without it. I’d like to see you go a mere 6 months without a hospital in your condition.

Government creates nothing. Government produces nothing. All government can do is transfer money from one group to another, taking out a huge bite for themselves along the way. Soon there will be enough government emoployees to elect a President on their own. If that thought doesn’t scare you, then you’re part of the problem. Calling me names does nothing for your argument.

Try sewers, streets, highways, hospitals, law enforcement, it goes on and on, Harley. Things you couldn’t live a day without, and as you get older, you’re becoming more dependent on. Good luck on your cognitive disonance.

I don’t recall ever having said things like firefighters, emergency personnel, police and the like weren’t necessary. Kindly quit putting words in my mouth. Why the attitude? Are you a government worker? : )

@Cruiser It’s all about the olives. The Martini just provides a great pickling soak. :-)

@CaptainHarley Notice the great rush of people moving from the USA and Europe to places like Somaila, Ghana, The tribal areas of Pakistan and other ungoverned locales? No, neither did I. I to get tired of hearing all the caterwauling about evil gubment. Glad @Espiritus_Corvus chimed in to call you out on it.

I appreciate what Thomas Paine contributed to the foundation of our nation with his pamphlets, but he was a radical and not a man I would look to for guidance about how to actually establish a government. I think the Constitution is a much better doccument to guide us than Paine’s Common Sense.

So, if you are so sold on places with no government, there are plenty around the world, How come you haven’t just moved to one? And how come they are all hell-holes if governing least is the way to go?

As much as I admire Tom Paine, he was a propagandist and revolutionary, not a leader of governments. Like Lenin, Mao and Che Gueverra; those that did lead governments were disasterous. Paines only stint in government almost got him guillotined by the French. If Jeffereson hadn’t bailed him out, Paine would have lost his head.

After hearing Sarah Palin say on Leno that the Tea Party’s claims are based on common sense and that things like “Keep the government away from my Medicar” make sense. I think there is little hope for this group.

@CaptainHarley Using anything that spews from the mouth of Bob Basso is hardly a convincing argument for your cause. Quite the contrary. If the advocates of said cause are crackpot revolutionaries with misguided and non-specific grievances then your “movement” is doomed.

Basso as Paine sounds more like Glenn Beck bloviating on Foxx News. It’s a dreadful act that reminds us that free speech works for and against the people who enshrine and protect it. The freedom to speak freely gives us the right to say what we like and the duty to tolerate speech we consider ridiculous. We are wise to do both with equal vigor – and with civility.

Bob Basso’s Paine is no fun at all. The rant elicits no laughter, no joy, no happiness and certainly leads not to creativity, spontaneity or exuberance. Bob has gone from fun to fury, from a message that brings people together to one that divides Americans into warring camps. It’s hard to believe, but Bob Basso has turned into a Thomas Paine few historians not Right Wing Republican fundamentalists would recognize.

Basically, I think Bob Basso’s new role as a revolutionary anti-government rabble-rouser is simply awful. The impression he does of Paine is also a terrible disservice to the legacy of the great man’s memory and ignores his humanist philosophy that got him in so much trouble with the very types of orthodox religionists to whom Basso’s Paine appeals.

@CaptainHarley I agree with the idea that government can overreach and that too much interference in private affairs is not good for the body public. My problem is that in a reaction to what I see as minor incursions, many of the Tea Party ilk seem determined to do away with everything the federal government does with the possible exception of the defense department. I definitely have a problem with that world view. I do not want America taken back to something akin to Dickensian England with work houses for the poor.

I do not believe that in an age when rivers catch on fire and we suffer from acid rain, the EPA should be dismantled. I do not believe that we’d be better off if we forgot what Upton Sinclair taught us about the horrors of the meat packing industry at the turn of the 20th century, and we got rid of all government oversight of food production. The Gubment BAD crowd has already taken us too far in that direction. Deregulators slashed 95% of the inspection staff of the FDA and outsourced it to the food industry. The result has been wave after wave of recent food-borne illness and deaths.

I’ve asked repeatedly why, if less government is always better, the areas of the world with the least government are such hell holes. You have so far not offered an answer to that. Did they just eliminate government the wrong way? Point me to a model of no-government paradise. If you can demonstrate that your political ideas actually work, I will listen. But no amount of insults or bluster or claims that I was asleep during history classes will win that argument for you. As I recall from history, lack of adequate government brought on the dark ages—not my idea of paradise at all.

There’s a vast, vast difference between an effective government and a cumbersome, top-heavy, overweening bureaucracy which arrogates power to itself, tramples on the rights of the people, and creates an illegal system of confiscatory taxation to pay for itself.

@CaptainHarley There certainly is. Fortunately, those ugly terms do not apply to our government except in some rare departures that soon get corrected. We have the lowest individual tax rate of any industrialized nation on Earth. For that low tax rate, we have the most powerful military on earth and spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined.

It’s fine to want something for nothing but you generally hurt your own interests when you actually try to get something for nothing. I am guessing you would not even consider slashing defense spending. The only other way to balance the budget would be to basically eliminate everything else the Federal Government does.

That would move tens of millions of people into joblessness with no safety net, kill health care for all seniors and the poor, and plunge the fragile economy into a total depression. But hey, who cares? You could get another modest tax cut. And you wouldn’t have the big bad Gubment around to keep your environment safe, repair the crumbling infrastructure or any of that other outrageous stuff they do.